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Lazarus
Lazarus of Nai is a mage from Eidolon, a pseudo-medieval world brimming with magic and cobbled together from various pieces of various alternate Earths; this is due to an event known as the "World-Forge" that occurred about one hundred years before Lazarus' current timeline. Background Pre-Manifestation Lazarus grew up in the small town of Nai, nestled at the base of a large mountain range and in relative good fortune - sleepy and quiet, but known for producing good sorcerers. He was born into an upper middle class lifestyle and enjoyed a comfortable childhood, up until the age of ten. That was when he experienced his Manifestation: the first signs of a sorcerer developing their powers. Lazarus' was, in a temper tantrum, accidentally conducting his roiling emotions, the heat of his body, and the temperature of the room into a vivid burst of flame concentrated in a childish screech. He frightened both himself, the other boys he was playing with (whom he had been angry with in the first place), and startled the watching adults. Immediately his parents (mother teary due to knowing what was ahead for him, father proud of a magically-inclined son) sent to Gattoe - the heart of Docelle and the city that contained the academy Lazarus would be traveling to - and prepared Lazarus for his schooling. Soon he was sent away with his childhood friend Siva to Gattoe in a caravan, to be enrolled in a curriculum that would last ten long years. Schooling The decade of study was harsh, and served to distance Lazarus from other people that weren't Siva - his instructors were cool and ruthless in their teaching methods, and the other pupils were engrossed in their studies. Still, Lazarus soon found his knack - necromancy and the arts aligned with death. He took to it immediately, and soon his innocent fright of corpses and death faded as he became engrossed in the subleties of the art. His attempts at mastering healing and arts aligned with life failed miserably, and instead he resorted to practicing his potion-brewing and such techniques to circumvent it. During that decade, Lazarus became known for cheating death on multiple occasions: the first was merely a very close call with a classmate's zombie thrall (Lazarus was able to ward it off with fire, though suffering minor injury). The second was later in his school decade, while he was gathering materials in the large forest outside of Gattoe - he encountered a mad bear and the injuries he suffered were very near mortal. He should have died, and hovered near the edge for months; gradually, however, he recovered, sporting nasty scarring from the attack and gaining a new sense of awe and respect from his peers. From there is where he gained the nickname of "Lazarus", and that was the second name that he eventually took upon graduation. At graduation he and his close friend both abandoned their true names and took secondary ones; he "Lazarus", his best friend "Siva". Their birth names are only known to one another due to safety; knowing a sorcerer's true name is to have complete control over their magic and some control over them directly. Their hands were branded with the Sorcerer's Mark and they were sent on a caravan back to Nai, to decide what to do with themselves. Lazarus (then eighteen) was unsure. Siva (then twenty) was acting odd, had been for a week or so, but Lazarus wasn't concerned about his closest friend. The destruction of Nai The caravan took months to make its way back to Nai; by then Lazarus' family had become distant but beloved strangers, his friends outside of Siva nonexistent. He was officially titled as Lazarus of Nai, just as his friend had become Siva of Nai, and was incredibly proud of the fact; the fact of him being a necromancer brought automatic suspicion on his motivations and morality that made him uneasy, so he then (and to this day) vastly preferred using "sorcerer" or "mage" or any other term. Necromancer Lazarus of Nai weathered the teasing of Paladin Siva of Nai quietly. He enjoyed the caravan back to Nai and the various stops they made, but was eager to return home and meet the inhabitants of Nai all over again. The night they returned, and after the celebration had subsided, Lazarus was awoken by screams and the heat of flames; he was able to fend off the fire easily, and found Nai burning and all of its inhabitants dead, save for two: himself and a mad Siva. Their short duel was a standstill; they knew one another's names, they could control any significant magic thrown at them. Siva instead raised the burning dead in Nai and neglected to erase their memories of the afterlife; driven insane by returning to life with such knowledge, they attacked Lazarus mercilessly. Siva invited Lazarus to follow him on the path "to their greatness"; he then disappeared while Lazarus killed Nai a second time. By the time he was finished Siva was gone, both of their names ruined and Lazarus left penniless. Full of betrayal and hatred, and grieving the hometown he barely knew, Lazarus cast off his sorcerer's title in shame and swept aside all other dreams and aspirations. He set himself upon a mission to apprehend Siva and demand answers - and then to put him down (or try and save him, which was what Lazarus actually wanted to do but refused to admit to), not out of concern for Docelle's health or Eidolon's safety, but out of a misguided blame of himself for all the misfortune that had befallen the two of them and an attempt for penance. He followed Siva and soon heard word of a sorcerer heading for the first temple of the pilgrimage; he surmised the "path to greatness" was said pilgrimage, and grimly set forth on it. The Pilgrimage So far, Lazarus has not left the continent of Docelle yet - he has been on the pilgrimage road for eight years, grasping at straws and suffering near-misses with Siva all the while. So far he has visited two of the temples that function as checkpoints to his journey; one in the sorcerer-hostile city-state of Dorohedel, and one in the toxic land of Propecia. Dorohedel Dorohedel was the first country Lazarus passed into. An oppressive police-state filled with nothing but shady backroom meetings, cloak and dagger politics, and eavesdroppers everywhere - not to mention the national sport was hunting the magically-inclined. Being caught would mean death. He couldn't rightly bribe his way through the country, so instead he was forced to creep through with some help from certain double agents and friendlies, such as the handful of secret sorcerers and spies distributed throughout the infrastructure. He moved through the territory quickly, managing to keep a low profile (admittedly with a handful of very close brushes) until he reached the temple itself - the location was widely known, but no one without magical inclination could enter a barrier surrounding it. The path to the temple was heavily monitored and the trip inside wasn't so much a trip as it was a mad dash; he was under fire from what felt like every angle, and in the end, nearly died for the third time when a bounty hunter managed to grab him. He killed said bounty hunter and managed to accidentally take away the leather strap of the hunter's hat as a trophy. Lazarus was given said strap as the trophy to prove his trial, and safely deterred to the next country. Propecia Propecia came next - it was a nation where the environment and fauna had become poisonous, from the grass to the trees to the people. Having heard of where the temple lay back in his schooling days, Lazarus immediately set to ingesting the leaves of the poisonous plants nightly - they made him violently ill every night, and constantly nauseous, but he kept at it throughout the entire stay in the country. Eventually he met a girl named Penelope who had tried to lift his wallet, whom he quickly made a deal with - if she would lead him to the sorcerer's temple, he would give her the contents of his wallet without question. She accepted, but eventually became deeply disturbed by Lazarus' self-destructive ritual of brewing the plant leaves into tea and urged him to turn away from his quest. He didn't comply, and so she attempted to rob him blind in the capital city of Salvia and force him to make his way somewhere else. He caught her - she threatened to abandon him and he threatened to wander out hopelessly into the wilderness. Penelope caved and lead him to an area nicknamed Rappaccini's Meadow, where the sorcerers remained, isolated in their temple. Lazarus gave Penelope his wallet - all of its contents, he didn't seem to mind - and abandoned her at the outer limits of the Meadow, knowing she wouldn't follow him and ignoring her pleas. Everything in the meadow was much more toxic than the rest of Propecia, where brushing flowers could cause anaphylactic shock and a butterfly landing on the skin could cause it to dissolve. Ingesting the toxins daily and nightly had raised his tolerance of the natural poisons enough to survive, though he ended up dashing wildly through the meadow and fending off dragonflies with his cloak (which would eat holes in said cloak, still unmended in Bete Noire) and his shoes came apart. He survived, and at his arrival at their doorstep the sorcerers took him in and set to bandaging him up from all the blisters (caused by the air) and the fact that he could barely breathe (the flower pollen). Weeks later, he was well enough to itch from cabin fever and recieved his totem: the thin burn scar that circles his wrist and travels along the inside of his palm to the tip of his middle finger, a mark from being branded with the blood of a deadly creature called the Dhael. It glows bright golden in the sun for some reason or another, though Lazarus never questions it. He was in the process of being ushered out of Propecia and towards the next point on his path with two mage escorts when Bete Noire dragged him away. Sala'Kharo The next point on his journey. A vast, vast desert, Sala'Kharo is known for the single river flowing through it and hidden among the dunes known as the Laevetainne River, where the water is precious and sweet and pure silver. He will have to survive the punishing desert heat and the chilling nights, scrying for water and hoping his skills are sharp enough to save him an agonizing death in the sand. The sand that is made out of glass. Ah, and he'll have to avoid the gigantic, churning, living whirlpools full of jagged broken glass-teeth that have been known to shred travelers' feet as they walk, seconds later followed by the rest of them. Spectacular country, that is. Personality Lazarus is an obsessive, functionally-unstable and forever self-flagellating man that spends his free time with corpses. Naturally, this has had a negative effect on his people skills. On first appearances, he makes sure to put out an image of a confident, sardonic asshole with little that throws him off his game. A master sorcerer that nobody should rightly play around with, infinitely knowledgeable in the fine art of the craft, driven, tough enough to survive this long in his pilgrimage, and worthy of respect. That's the image he's always put out for other sorcerers to hide any sign of weakness, as all other sorcerers usually do the same and the Academy never smiled on any signs of weakness. Naturally, that's all a crafted image and only really suited for brief contact with people. In reality, he's an emotionally unstable sorcerer with manic-depressive spells, a great deal of self-loathing, and an unhealthy obsession with Siva.